Four of Bath’s most-exciting tech innovators are to bid for funding worth £30m in front of an audience made up of some of the UK’s top investors.
The firms, all members of the city’s SETsquared innovation incubator, will take part in the real-life Dragon’s Den-style showcase at The Shard in London next Wednesday. 
The firms – catering software firm Sure Sense, Smart Antenna Technologies, which is developing multiband antenna technology for portable devices, maths app developer EZ Education and sustainable power firm Green Running – will be among more than 20 SETsquared tech start-ups at the event, which will take place on the 22nd floor of the iconic skyscraper, Europe’s tallest building.
Each business will have just 10 minutes to pitch to the likes of Mercia Fund Management and Eden Ventures, the Bath-based private equity funder.
The event, called Accelerating Growth and now in its 11th year, is organised by SETsquared, the business incubation programme run by a partnership of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey.
SETsquared businesses have raised some £60m in investment over the past year, a 100% increase on 2013. Accelerating Growth, which is support by leading intellectual property firm Mathys & Squire, aims to boost that figure by putting start-ups face-to-face with angel investors, venture capitalists, high net worth individuals and self-certified sophisticated investors.
SETsquared’s Bath-based innovation director Simon Bond said: “The fact that businesses within our incubator have doubled the amount of funding they have raised in the last year proves there is real appetite for investors to partner with high growth potential technology companies. This positive outlook has created a real buzz around our event and we are hoping to add significantly to the amount we have helped our companies raise at Accelerating Growth.”
Over the past 12 years SETsquared has helped more than 1,000 businesses raise over £1bn in investment, figures that have contributed to it being named by the UBI as the top university business incubator in Europe and number two in the world.
Bath businesses taking part in Accelerating Growth are:
Sure Sense
Sure Sense is set to revolutionalise the way commercial kitchens do business. It has created software and hardware systems that eliminate the need for outdated paper forms, saving caterers, hotels and other venues valuable time and money. With a single premiership football stadium generating over 3000 paper forms on a match day which take three managers a full day to review, the benefits of the system are clear.
Smart Antenna Technologies
Smart Antenna Technologies specialises in patented smart multiband antenna technology for portable devices and offers more functions but smaller size and lower cost. The company has designed, developed and patented highly compact offering that replaces all existing antennas, including DVB-H, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GSM, GPS, 3G multi-bands and 4G LTE with just one.
EZ Education Ltd
EZ Education Ltd is the inventor of DoodleMaths, the top-grossing primary maths app in the UK. The educational app not only engages children in maths, but is guaranteed to deliver measureable improvements. The app differs from others on the market because it is adaptive, producing a work program tailored to each child.
Green Running
Green Running has a revolutionary technology that, through monitoring a single point on the mains power line, is able to cheaply and accurately disaggregate the Power Load into which home appliances are consuming it through their unique power load signatures and report on how much they are costing. The system even provides this data in Real Time through a slick tablet dashboard and phone app to the consumer and Energy companies, enabling both to drive further energy reduction and reduce costs.
